CARISSMA Is "Crashtest Facility Of The Year"

CARISSMA, the Center of Automotive Research on Integrated Safety Systems at the Ingolstadt University of Applied Sciences receives the renowned "Crashtest Facility of the Year" award from the English publishing company UKIP. The facility, which was built and designed by the German crash test manufacturer MESSRING, is one of the core elements in Europe's unique test and research center.

In receiving this award, MESSRING continues to build on its success in previous years. For the fifth time a MESSRING facility succeeded in beating out the competition. "Wee are really happy, that CARISSMA won the award. Even for us a system of this size at a university was a challenge. The award demonstrates that we aced it and positioned ourselves as a forward-looking partner", says Dierk Arp, CEO at MESSRING.

The renowned English publishing company UKIP has presented the coveted award since 2006 to honor outstanding projects and innovations in the automotive industry. The independent jury is comprised of automotive experts and experienced industry journalists from different media outlets in the automotive and safety testing industry.

For CARISSMA MESSRING delivered a MicroTrack system, an electric propulsion system especially designed for crash-test facilities, a mobile impact block, a film pit with transparent cover panels, and a variety of barriers and structures for a number of different impact scenarios to Ingolstadt.

The 77-meter crash test facility at CARISSMA was equipped with the proven MESSRING MicroTrack system. The system offers a major benefit: the guide channel is much narrower than in conventional systems, allowing for many more details to be captured in high speed video footage from below in the film pit - a key factor in evaluating vehicle crashing behavior. The special barriers supplied by MESSRING allow the university's engineers to conduct offset tests and small overlap tests, as well as pole tests. These are all mandatory crash-test variations required by individual public testing authorities (such as the well-known NCAP program with the star rating) from North America, Europe, and Asia.

The sled-test facility is powered by an electric power train developed by MESSRING especially for use in crash tests. The electric motor for the center will have a power rating of 400 kilowatts. This allows vehicles weighing a total of up to 3.0 tons to be accelerated to a speed of 65 km/h before they collide with the impact block. The special feature of this block is that it can be completely removed to clear the entire space. This allows active-safety tests, e.g. tests with braking assistance systems of vehicles, which require more space.